Richard Rigg: The Inhabitant of the Watchtower

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Mon 22 October at 01:08PM
Tue 23 October at 02:32PM
Wed 24 October at 06:52PM
Fri 26 October at 06:52PM
Sat 27 October at 07:22PM

www.theinhabitantofthewatchtower.info
http://www.basic.fm/?p=1616

The Inhabitant of the Watchtower is a durational project by artist Richard Rigg. A recording apparatus was installed in the barren stage of the Mojave desert in California the device employed there records, erases then plays sound. It takes a field recording, including extremely low and high frequencies; it erases those sounds within the human audible bracket, then it broadcasts that which is remaining ultrasonic sound.
This device remains in situ and will continue to broadcast an ultrasonic portrait of its environment indefinitely. A portrait void of information for a human audience but full of information out-with the physiological limits of our perception.
The audio is a field recording taken from beside the apparatus while it completes this process of recording, erasure then broadcast in the Mojave desert. It contains the ultrasonic sound broadcast by the devise, the static sound of the apparatus completing this task of sound erasure, as well as the other sounds around it, which the machine is erasing.

CIRCA Projects is a not-for-profit curatorial arts organisation. Its main goal is to present the viewer with coherently researched exhibitions that are embedded in the present. Our work is mainly based in the presentation and production of new art works and projects within lens-based and time-based practices. Hence our aim is to encourage a critical discussion around contemporary art production and we stress the importance of regularly organising artist talks, debates and lectures in order to create an access point to art and its contexts. Exhibitions, screenings, talks, publications and commissions, in both gallery and off-site contexts, are some of the means by which CIRCA Projects works with artists.
www.circaprojects.org

Join us next Tuesday for a talk by Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren, and a tour of his first UK solo exhibition colour-time-structure at Workplace Gallery.

Dahlgren's materials are often banal and quotidian, objects for everyday use produced for another purpose than art; plastic clothes-hangers, yoghurt containers, dartboards, coloured pens, mirrors, silk ribbons and so forth. Far from being read as trash, Dahlgren's formal language refers back to visual experiences which are reminiscent of various artistic modes of the twentieth century such as Constructivism, Op Art, Minimal Art and Pop Art.

Steel Sculptures

Eric Bainbridge presents a series of new works made from reclaimed steel and other more incongruous materials, drawing himself closer to the modernist abstraction of the 1950s and '60s embodied by sculptors David Smith and Anthony Caro. The sculptures extend his practice of collage, combining both formal and unexpected elements and reveal the duality which has run throughout his career.

Bainbridge has always been interested in the surface of things and previous sculptural works have incorporated materials such as fake fur and wood-effect melamine. Often described as kitsch, his preferred materials are found in second hand shops, scrap metal yards and DIY stores; his sculptures reconsider the value of the readily available and cheap. He has blown objects up to outsize proportions, covered them and piled them up in a variety of balancing acts. Bainbridge incorporates multiple components and reference points, including concepts and inspiration from art history and today's cultural field.

The Street is a programme of artist projects, events and research taking place both in and beyond the Gallery. Artist Matt Stokes has made a film tracing a story set within the local Bangladeshi community.

Matt Stokes (b. 1973) immerses himself in communities to look at the culture that shapes people's lives. His projects develop into films, installations, archives and events that utilise the collective knowledge and skills within these communities.

The film Give to Me the Life I Love shows two stories mirroring each other across different moments in time. Iqbal, shown in the present day, has a curious friendship with Mohib, a teenager who works in his uncle's food emporium. Iqbal is also shown in the late 1970s, when a young person himself, caught up in an area beset by racial tensions. The story draws on accounts of the struggles faced by Bangladeshis when first arriving in the UK and the experiences of younger generations living in East London today. Stokes collaborated with scriptwriter Syed Rahman to weave these sources together into a story uncovering possible tensions between friendships and communities in the face of hostility.

Presented alongside the film is a collection of Bengali books spanning 38 years. Transforming the gallery into a library and archive these books underpin the significance of language to Bangladeshi identity.

The idea for Give to Me the Life I Love was formed when Stokes visited the 40th anniversary celebrations of Bangladesh's liberation in 2011. Over the last year he has searched archives, talked to people locally and travelled to Bangladesh, learning about language, music and activism.

Viaindustriae will present an inventory, an exhibition on a specific issue, opening 7th october 2012.

Happy Fashion is a wide research about the "high and the low" fashion in Italy in which a series of stories connected to companies and manufacturers of the region-district of Umbria describe a piece af history of italian fashion; from Lancetti to Armani, from the xenophilous Ginocchietti to the sport innovation of Ellesse brand. A cultural trip also made of minor voices tied by "poor" clothing, tailing, pret a porter. Small companies of creative people who designed sundresses and aprons, franciscan rubber-sandals and rosaries made of coloured prayer beads. A sociological research which describes a split of the "happy society" of the 60's, 70's, 80's, (an happiness interrupted by the Years of Lead), contrasting with the crisis of the present age.

The exhibition presents in the disused factory of one of this companies, the interventions of international artists who use fashion as "antisystem", metaphor of the contraddictions of society and crisis of the language.

The editorial project starts from a research/dossier about a textile's district, conceived after the finding of documents and materials located in an abandoned building of a small firm named Happy Fashion.

Begining for a wider range of inventory the editorial staff found a world of fashion designers, cloth hactivists, fashion victims, workers à façone, producers, master craftmen working in external laboratories in the umbrian countryside. Among these, we meet Felice, trustworthy knitter who works in his house for the high society of the italian fashion scene, the so-called made in Italy.

Armsden is delighted to announce 20/12 London Art Now. Showcasing twenty of the most innovative contemporary artists at work in London today, the exhibition presents 'one to watch' as selected by twenty influential and dynamic individuals in the contemporary art sector.

In the year that sees London mark The Queen's Diamond Jubilee and host the Olympic Games, 20/12 London Art Now celebrates the very best of London's emerging artistic talent. Curated by Armsden, this exhibition explores the work of these rising stars within the exceptional surrounds of National Trust property, Lodge Park. Standing apart from London's conventional gallery spaces, this unique seventeenth century grandstand in the heart of the Cotswolds offers an inspirational setting in which to look afresh at the presentation and experience of contemporary art today.

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Workplace Gallery is a contemporary art gallery run by artists.
Based in Gateshead UK, Workplace Gallery represents a portfolio of emerging and established artists through the gallery programme, curatorial projects and international art fairs.